


Foil

by redletters



Category: Hamlet - Shakespeare
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-10-19
Updated: 2006-10-19
Packaged: 2018-01-25 01:50:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1625180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redletters/pseuds/redletters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I'll be your foil, Laertes. In mine ignorance your skill shall, like a star in the darkest night, stick fiery off indeed." -- Hamlet, 5.2.201-3</p>
            </blockquote>





	Foil

**Author's Note:**

> Note after the Open Doors Yuletide import in 2014: This is a very old fic that I'm too embarrassed to reread. If you're reading it, best of luck and I hope it isn't too terrible!
> 
> Written for Peak in Darien.

 

 

The game was for Ophelia, Laertes' young sister and the object of the boys' sparring. They darted through the schoolrooms, and their own rooms, outside and in the casements, pelting paper bullets at each other and thrusting with quills. "The maid is mine!" the prince called, leaping from an armchair to bear Laertes to the floor. He was but two months younger, but already Hamlet excelled him in their schooling in all but strategy - and swordsmanship.

"It shall not be so! I defy you!" Laertes vowed, like the best heroes in the romances they read together: Troilus and Hector and Paris all together. The prince, Greek and golden, burnt his city to the ground and claimed the prize: fair Cressida, sanctified Briseis, mad Cassandra. She peered around the corner when she heard them fall silent, quill in hand, emulating her brother as she did in everything.

Hamlet rose and straightened, casting a look at Laertes sprawled on the floor before shooing his sister away and returning a scattered book to its shelf.

"Th'art too young yet," Laertes explained to her after supper. She pursed her lips, but nodded acquiescence.

The prince's moods had seemed whimsical for years. Hamlet would watch his father drilling the army in the courtyard, and for days afterward not be seen for passes with his rapier. Other times, the schoolmaster or Yorick would tell them tales of Solomon, Arthur, and the quest for holy wisdom; Hamlet would then be up hours in Laertes' chamber, tossing books and words across the room with equal dexterity. He left Laertes with a stack of tomes as high as he himself and the grey light of morning seeping under the curtains.

So they were when they were young.

Laertes was eleven when he first became aware of Reynaldo, the fox. A tall man with whiskers stood beside his father at dinner and drank but one goblet of wine. The prince passed him a note in their secret writing. "Are we for a game of spies?" it read. Laertes looked up the table, where Hamlet winked.

When he and the prince were old enough for broadswords, the king made them both gifts. Laertes practiced a month until he could lift and swing his easily, although he did not like the two-handed grip.

The prince watched him. Once Laertes saw him try a pass, then another; but he did not heft the blade well, it stooped to the ground, and soon Hamlet abandoned the exercise. Laertes encountered him in the portrait hall the next day, late for their lessons, standing with books in hand gazing upon the picture of the king. "I forget who I am," the prince muttered as he strode before Laertes, toward the schoolroom. Laertes did not again see him with his father's gift. A rapier was always at his side.

The prince turned to books; he often read in the exercise room while Laertes made his sword play. "What think you o'this?" he said, and read a passage.

"I think my lord accuses me of pandering," Laertes said, panting.

Hamlet frowned and read the page again. "I beg pardon!" he said, "'Twas not my intent."

But your sister is fair, hung in the air unspoken.

So they were as they grew older.

They saw one another off, packed the same day to travel west and south.

"I hear Wittenberg is green," Laertes said. They stood alone on the moat bridge. Kings and queens and fathers take their farewells indoors.

"I hear Paris is lively," Hamlet said, and Laertes laughed.

"I shall think of you often," he said, and mimicked the prince's voice: "What think you of this passage, Laertes? Canst stop your fencing and list to me? Wherefore doth Plutarch write so dull?"

Hamlet clasped him close, surprising Laertes near off his feet; their sword-belts rattled against each other. "I shall think of thee often as well," he said hoarsely in Laertes' ear. His cheek and neck were warm against Laertes' own.

So they were when they left one another.

Reynaldo, the fox, set all his Danish friends about him while in Paris.

"Whither goest, good Laertes?" "Come you to the music playing tonight, my friend?" All whithers, wheres, and whens. He could not but leave the university square to walk by the river but two or three would be crowding him, "surely you do not wish to go alone? It shows a melancholy disposition, good my lord...."

Laertes sent his man out for bread in the mornings, and breakfasted alone.

The room was smaller than his place in Elsinore, but brighter. Sweet Paris sang with tonguing, lyrical voices; the streets ran with books and apples; the Seine ran with row-boats and rubbish. Early one morning, taking his dawn constitutional, he saw a lady's cap floating by, with a sprig of white lilies clipped to it. The air was chill; Laertes shivered and turned his footsteps back to the university.

Three years passed, and amidst a flood of letters from his father and sister, a post with the king's seal. The king was dead. Hamlet would succeed.

He did not touch the note from Ophelia that came the same day, for he could almost smell jealousy in himself, and he hated it.

The first he did on reaching the castle was to seek out the prince in his old chambers. Voices were within, laughing: he heard books being stacked. A familiar sound to him for these rooms. Laertes knocked; the voices stopped. Moments later, a stranger of his height and years opened the door.

"Is Hamlet within?" Laertes asked. He hoped the stranger would note the familiar style, and understand. Instead, he smiled and oped the door wider. Golden lamplight made everything within seem to glow faintly, as though coated in wealthy phosphorescence. Laertes did not enter.

"Pray convey my condolences," he said, and retreated.

So it was when they met - or did not meet - again.

Laertes did not see the prince again without his Wittenberg schoolfellow at his side. What had been nights of study turned into nights of practice: he ordered rapiers made, tested them until he could pass with each better than any man he knew. The game was for Ophelia, perhaps.

 


End file.
